


Lipstick & Leather

by Areiton



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Future Fic, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, POV Derek, Promises, Protective Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 16:56:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13439172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: They bury her there, in the place where so many of the people he loved died, near where Laura rests.The two girls he loved best, the sisters he doesn’t want to let go of and can’t keep.OrDerek grieving after "Fireflies"





	Lipstick & Leather

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write this for ages. It's completely self-indulgent headcanon and sad. You've been warned.

He takes her home.

He thinks he probably shouldn't, should take her to Boyd, should find out what the hell is going on with Cora. But she's there,  frail and still the way she never was in life. She weighs almost nothing as he curls her against him, the blonde wisps of her hair dank and tangled and soaking up the salty tears he can’t stop from falling.

He wants to take it all back, wants to--he takes a shuddering breath.

He takes her home.

~

She caught his eye that first time because she was watching Stilinski, the way he knew he sometimes watched the boy. With bright eyed fondness, with exasperation mixed with affection, with the ease of knowing no one would notice her gaze.

Certainly not Stiles.

She lingered in his gaze because she smelled wrong. Sick. A taste on the back of his tongue that made his stomach twist and his hands clench--like pennies on the tongue and rotten meat and salty tears, and still, her scent held a trace of oak, of something old and solid and strong.

She stayed in his mind because she smiled. She smiled, at her mother, in a diner, and he saw Laura in that smile, sharp and teasing and impossible to resist.

She caught his eyes and held him in thrall and he chose her, without ever really deciding to.

~*~

She wasn’t his first, but she was his favorite.

Isaac was needy and he loved the tall, gangly boy, but he was Scott’s, so torn between them, even from the beginning, that he never felt like Isaac’s alpha.

Boyd chose this, walked into it eyes wide open, but he didn’t need Derek the way the others did, was smart and quiet and collected. He was a brilliant beta, one Derek could be proud of, but he was proud of all of them, a secret aching thing that made him want to pull them close and tell them everything they were doing right, how good they were.

He didn’t, because he was hunted, still, always, because he was scared, because he was desperate to protect them.

He pushed them, hard, harder than he should have, and she smirked, and glared, and bitched, but always, always, met his absurd demands.

~*~

The Jeep clatters up to the house. The sun is shining, hot on his shoulders, and he doesn’t really know how long he’s been here. The blood from Boyd and Cora is dried and flaking, and his hands are cramped and aching from clawing at the dirt, digging the grave wide and deep. His whole body hurts and he’s dizzy--he needs to stop, needs to rest and heal, _needs_ to find Boyd and Cora, but he doesn’t.

He ignores the Jeep and the boy falling out of it, and digs.

~*~

He had found Laura’s car long before he found her, hadn’t even had to look for it--it was parked in front of her hotel room, a unassuming silver sedan that he eyed with disgust as he broke the lock and slipped into the room.

It had smelled stale, untouched, and he’d sat there, as the day stretched and died and she never came back. He’d packed up her clothes and her books, the makeup on the counter and her shoes, put it all carefully in his Camaro and left that place behind.

He didn’t think about it again, because it hurt to think about.

Until Erica, with her big golden eyes and her wide, eager smile, and the body she hid under sweatshirts and baggy pants.

He thought of Laura, who would love this girl, so similar to herself, and how they would have terrorized him together, how she would have been a better alpha for her than Derek can ever be.

“C’mere,” he says, softly, and Erica’s eyes find his, questioning and curious, as he stands. Leads her to the trunk where he keeps all of Laura’s things, the leather mini-skirts, the corsets and leather jacket. The boots and makeup.

“You can have whatever you want,” he says, and she stares at him, something soft and knowing in her gaze.

It’s the last time he ever sees her looking soft.

~*~

She looks so much like Laura, with her painted red lips and the body she uses like a weapon, that he can’t even breath for a moment.

She smiles, then, wry and shy and pleased, before she ducks out for the day.

~*~

“Let me help,” Stiles says, and Derek trembles under the touch of his hand, gentle on Derek’s shoulder.

It’s the same thing he had said earlier, months ago, when they were missing and Derek was desperate to find them and pushing Isaac away to keep him safe.

 _Let me help_ , Stiles begged, and Derek did because he had no idea what else to do, and because Stiles meant safety, because he’d meant that since the night they’d confronted Peter in the hospital and Stiles _chose him_ over that damn game he’d been so proud to play in.

“Derek,” Stiles says, low and soothing. The way one would speak to a hurt animal, and Derek makes a noise, almost like a sob.

“Derek, let me,” Stiles says and Derek collapses into the touch of him, leaning into Stiles’ strong legs as he stands behind him, steady and familiar and _there._

He can’t move, while Stiles drops into the hole, the grave--it makes his chest tight and his breath catch and he feels panic clawing at him before Stiles looks at him, carefully reassuring--and finishes digging.

~*~

They bury her there, in the place where so many of the people he loved died, near where Laura rests.

The two girls he loved best, the sisters he doesn’t want to let go of and can’t keep.

“It hurts,” he says and Stiles nods, leaning against him, offering the same thing he’s always offered--strength. Help.

Derek thinks of her, smiling at him with bright red lips and saying, “You love him, don’t you?”

She never let him hide. Laura hadn’t either. She’d smacked a kiss on her cheek, her claws pricking his skin when she squeezed his arm. “Don’t fuck it up with him, alpha.”

He sits there, in the shadow of his home, side by side with the boy they both loved, and promises her he won’t.

~*~

He closes up the trunk when he finally goes back to the loft, the one he’d so hopefully carted along with him, praying she’d come back.

He folds up the skirts, the leather jackets, and puts it away, tosses in the makeup.

Cora is here, and he could offer it to her, she needs _something_. But Stiles drags her to a thrift store and he smiles his thanks, faint and tired.

Lipstick and leather memories, he thinks. They gave him enough for a lifetime, and there will never have been enough time.

~*~

Stiles crawls out of bed before Derek, stiff and sore from digging and laying tense a few inches from him all night, and he hears the groan the boy muffles. There’s something there, though, in the space he left behind, a small photo and Derek stares at it.

She’s laughing, bright and wild, her head tipped back and her eyes gleaming almost beta-gold. Her lips are red and wicked, that blue corset she loved just barely visible, and she looks at him like she’s happy.

~*~

Looking at the picture hurts, for a long time. Until it doesn’t. Until Stiles puts it in a frame and hangs it near the one of Laura and Derek in Central Park, near the picture of Stiles and Derek on their wedding day.

The trunk stays packed, though.

~*~

The girl is a beta, young and angry. Her eyes are green and cold, and she glares at him.

But something--something makes him pause.

Makes him take her back to the home he shares with Stiles and give her a home.

~*~

“Dad, what?”she demand and Derek huffs. Runs a hand over the trunk to wipe away the dust that’s collected and grins at his daughter.

“I think--I think this is yours,” he says and she shifts. Straightens. “Don’t--you don’t have to keep it. If you don’t want. It’s just. I think they’d want you to have it, if you do.”

She doesn’t press him for more and he doesn’t offer--after three years of Moria living with them, after Stiles and Derek adopted her, they’ve learned to give each other space around their trauma.

Derek retreats, and leaves Moria with the memories of his ghosts.

~*~

Three days later, she swings through the kitchen, and Derek’s heart stops, because--Erica grins at him, and Laura rolls her eyes, and Moria is staring at him, nervous under her attitude, tugging at the hem of her leather skirt, smoothing down her jacket.

“Is it ok?” she asks, cautiously.

It’s not. He wants to drag her to her room and layer her in five sweaters, and never let her out of the house looking so pretty. It hurts in the way he thinks Laura and Erica’s memories will always hurt, but there is something good in it too. The knowledge that they would be so happy to see her, this girl Derek loves and calls his own, wearing the same fierce expression and leather clothes they adored.

He shakes his head and smiles and says, honestly, “It’s just been a long time since I’ve seen lipstick and leather like that, together.”

She flushes but grins at him and leaves him with a lipstick kiss on his cheek, and a shout that she’d see him after school, and Stiles holds onto him as he trembles and breathes.


End file.
